Stripping For My Devil Ex Husband

The sterile quiet of the private surgical corridor was shattered by frantic, echoing footsteps.

​The double doors swung open, and Victoria Sterling strode into the hallway, her expression carved from stone, accompanied by Valerie, who was in near-hysterics, her face blotchy and eyes swollen red from crying all the way from the estate.

​The moment Valerie saw Anastasia standing against the wall... drenched in crimson, her clothes ruined, hands trembling... Valerie let out a ragged sob, burying her face in her hands.

​Victoria stopped dead in the center of the corridor. Her gaze swept over the surgical doors where the red IN SURGERY light burned like an open wound, then locked onto Anastasia.

​A wave of overwhelming guilt and shock broke Anastasia’s remaining composure. Fresh tears welled in her dark eyes, spilling over her bruised, blood-smeared cheeks.

​"Victoria..." Ana’s voice cracked, a shattered, breathless apology tearing from her throat. She stepped forward, her hands shaking violently. "I’m so sorry... It’s my fault. He went in because of me. He took the bullets because of me... I’m so sorry..."

​"Quiet, Anastasia," Victoria cut in, her voice cold, stern, and slicing through the hallway like a whip.

​There was a terrifying, aristocratic stiffness to Victoria’s posture, an icy fury radiating from her that made even the armed guards at the perimeter stand taller.

​Victoria turned a piercing, venomous glare toward Valerie, who flinched under her mother’s gaze.

​"Both of you acted with reckless, inexcusable foolishness," Victoria stated, her voice tight with suppressed rage. "Valerie, you bypassed your brother’s security grid and let Anastasia walk into an unvetted trap. And Anastasia, you thought you could play God without consequences. Now my son is lying on an operating table with hollow-point rounds tearing through his chest."

​Ana lowered her head, the weight of Victoria’s words pressing down on her like lead.

​"We will settle every single detail of this reckless circus once Damian is out of that room," Victoria added, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Not a moment before."

​Victoria closed the distance between them, stepping directly in front of Anastasia.

​She lifted a manicured hand and gently cupped Ana’s chin, tilting her face up toward the fluorescent lights. Victoria’s sharp eyes tracked the jagged, open cut across Ana’s cheekbone where Vivian’s signet ring had torn through the skin... the crimson still slowly welling around the edges.

​A subtle, fleeting flicker of concern softened the iron in Victoria’s eyes before her stern mask snapped back into place.

​Victoria reached down, picking up the two luxury garment bags she had carried from Northwood and handing them to Valerie.

​"Valerie," Victoria commanded without looking back at her daughter. "Take Anastasia to the private washroom down the hall right now. Clean this blood off her skin, get her into fresh clothes, and summon the floor doctor to stitch that laceration immediately."

​"Victoria, please, no," Ana protested, her voice rising in desperation as she pulled back, her eyes darting toward the locked surgical doors. "I can’t leave. I have to be here when the doctors come out. I need to know if he survives..."

​"You will do as I say, Anastasia," Victoria said, her baritone firm and uncompromising, stepping directly in front of the OR doors to block Ana’s line of sight. "Look at yourself. You are covered in his blood, shivering in shock, and bleeding from your face. Damian did not tear through an armed perimeter and take bullets through his spine just to watch you collapse from an infection in this hallway."

​Victoria’s gaze bore into Ana with absolute, unyielding authority.

​"You will clean yourself up, let a physician treat your wound, and put on clean clothes. By the time you return, you will stand before my son as the woman he bled to protect. Not a broken victim. Now go."

​Valerie stepped forward, gently taking Ana by the elbow, her own voice quiet and pleading. "Please, Ana... come with me. Let’s get you cleaned up."

​Knowing she could not break Victoria’s iron will, Anastasia choked back another sob, her trembling hands slowly curling into fists as Valerie guided her down the quiet, sterile hallway toward the washroom.

________________________

The cold water hammered against Anastasia’s skin, swirling pink and then dark crimson down the stainless-steel drain.

​She scrubbed frantically at her forearms, her chest, her throat, trying to wash away the thick, iron reek of Damian’s blood. But no matter how hard she pressed the sponge against her skin, the ghostly warmth of his blood seemed permanently burned into her pores.

​Outside the frosted glass door, Valerie leaned against the tiled wall, her voice trembling as it carried over the hiss of the shower.

​"Ana... you should have heard his voice on the phone," Valerie whispered, her breath catching on a ragged, broken sob. "I’ve known my brother my entire life. I’ve seen him cold, calculating, and completely untouchable. But when I called him from that café... when I confessed that I helped you sneak out, that Vivian had baited you with Clara and you walked straight into the trap..."

​Valerie paused, choking back fresh tears.

​"His voice didn’t just sound furious, Ana. He sounded utterly unhinged. There was a sheer, suffocating terror in his breath I have never heard from him in my life. He didn’t yell at me. He didn’t curse my stupidity. His voice just dropped into this dead, terrifying stillness... like his entire world had just collapsed and he was ready to burn the whole city down to get you back."

​Ana froze beneath the stream, the sponge slipping from her numb fingers.

​"He drove straight into an armed firing line without waiting for the feds, Ana," Valerie continued through the glass, her hands shaking against the tiles. "He didn’t care about the board, the company, or the law. The only thing in this world that mattered to him was keeping you breathing."

​The words struck Ana harder than any physical blow.

​Her chest heaved with suffocating agony. Vivian’s venomous revelation... he let you drown, he enjoyed your ruin... warred violently against the reality of Damian’s terror on the phone, and the memory of him throwing his broad frame over hers, taking hollow-point rounds to the spine without a single microsecond of hesitation.

​How could the man who destroyed her past be the exact same man who bled to death to give her a future?

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